Tempest

The cast mutated until finally it became the group which would perform the play, even if in the performances themselves one of them, the bosun, went awol, absorbed by his search for the best fried chicken in Kennington.

Numerous critics have been praising Bob Dylan's 35th studio album Tempest as the finest record he has made in a long time. Lyrically, it is a Dylan chef-d'oeuvre. Lines breeze out of him as he maximizes wordplay, and growls through his ballads. It is the album of a man who has found his calling as a totemic elder statesman of American folk and blues, and is a stark reminder why this septuagenarian remains music's foremost storyteller.

When Dylan's Time out of Mind came out in 1997 you could tell it had a different kind of electricity; lightning bolts instead of dim bulbs. Such a turnaround in creative endeavour was a long time in coming, but you knew it would come.